Recently in Performances

It might seem churlish to complain about the BBC Proms coverage of Pierre
Boulez’s 90th anniversary. After all, there are a few performances
dotted around — although some seem rather oddly programmed, as if embarrassed
at the presence of new or newish music. (That could certainly not be claimed in
the present case.)

I recently spent four days in St. Petersburg, timed to coincide with the
annual Stars of the White Nights Festival. Yet the most memorable singing I
heard was neither at the Mariinsky Theater nor any other performance hall. It
was in the small, nearly empty church built for the last Tsar, Nicholas II, at
Tsarskoye Selo.

As I walked up Exhibition Road on my way to the Royal Albert Hall, I passed a busking tuba player whose fairground ditties were enlivened by bursts of flame which shot skyward from the bell of his instrument, to the amusement and bemusement of a rapidly gathering pavement audience.

‘Here, thanks be to God, my opera is praised to the skies and there is nothing in it which does not please greatly.’ So wrote Antonio Vivaldi to Marchese Guido Bentivoglio d’Aragona in Ferrara in 1737.

When he was skilfully negotiating the not inconsiderable complexities,
upheavals and strife of musical and religious life at the English royal court
during the Reformation, Thomas Tallis (c.1505-85) could hardly have imagined
that more than 450 years later people would be queuing round the block for the
opportunity spend their lunch-hour listening to the music that he composed in
service of his God and his monarch.

Two of the important late twentieth century stage directors, Robert Carsen and Peter Sellars, returned to the Aix Festival this summer. Carsen’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a masterpiece, Sellars’ strange Tchaikovsky/Stravinsky double bill is simply bizarre.

Plus an evening by the superb Modigliani Quartet that complimented the brief (55 minutes) a cappella opera for six female voices Svadba (2013) by Serbian composer Ana Sokolovic (b. 1968). She lives in Canada.

With its revelatory production of Rappaccini’s Daughter performed outdoors in the city’s refurbished Botanical Gardens, Des Moines Metro Opera has unlocked the gate to a mysterious, challenging landscape of musical delights.

Even by Shakespeare’s standards A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one of his earlier plays, boasts a particularly fantastical plot involving a bunch of aristocrats (the Athenian Court of Theseus), feuding gods and goddesses (Oberon and Titania), ‘Rude Mechanicals’ (Bottom, Quince et al) and assorted faeries and spirits (such as Puck).

What do we call Tristan und Isolde? That may seem a silly question.
Tristan und Isolde, surely, and Tristan for short, although
already we come to the exquisite difficulty, as Tristan and Isolde themselves partly seem (though do they only seem?) to recognise of that celebrated ‘und’.

So this was it, the Pelléas which had apparently repelled critics and other members of the audience on the opening night. Perhaps that had been exaggeration; I avoided reading anything substantive — and still have yet to do so.

Performances

17 May 2005

Cyrano at the Met

NEW YORK—There’s a line in Act 2 of Franco Alfano’s rarely heard opera “Cyrano de Bergerac” that marks a critical turning point in the sad story of a poet’s unrequited love: “The Tiger’s awakening.” It’s said to Cyrano, the artist with a short temper, a fast sword and an excruciatingly big nose. But it might well stand for the effect tenor Placido Domingo had on audiences Friday night at the Metropolitan Opera when he sang the title role, a new role and the 121st of his exceptionally long and productive career.

NEW YORK -- There's a line in Act 2 of Franco Alfano's rarely heard opera "Cyrano de Bergerac" that marks a critical turning point in the sad story of a poet's unrequited love: "The Tiger's awakening." It's said to Cyrano, the artist with a short temper, a fast sword and an excruciatingly big nose. But it might well stand for the effect tenor Placido Domingo had on audiences Friday night at the Metropolitan Opera when he sang the title role, a new role and the 121st of his exceptionally long and productive career.

The rule at the Metropolitan Opera seems to be, "Whatever Placido wants, Placido gets." It has been that way for many years. The rule - if it is a rule - is a good one: The opera-going public has been the beneficiary. Three seasons ago, Mr. Domingo brought "Sly" to the Met, in a production fashioned by his wife, Marta. "Sly" is an opera by Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, and it's not an immortal one, but they don't all have to be, and "Sly" proved worth knowing.

On Friday night, Mr. Domingo starred in Alfano's "Cyrano de Bergerac," which was receiving its U.S. premiere. It, too, is worth knowing, and has provided Mr. Domingo - and others - a bona fide hit.

Music historians who have been poised to rewrite, if necessary, the chronicle of 20th-century opera, can relax. The Metropolitan Opera's first production of Franco Alfano's "Cyrano de Bergerac," which the company asserts is the North American premiere of this almost unknown 1936 work, opened on Friday night. It is no unjustly neglected masterpiece. It is not even an especially good opera.

But thanks to a vibrant production by the director Francesca Zambello, an admirable cast and, especially, the impassioned portrayal of the title role by Plácido Domingo, "Cyrano de Bergerac" does prove an engaging entertainment. The Met agreed to present this opera, a co-production with Covent Garden in London, at the behest of Mr. Domingo, who wanted to make Cyrano the 121st role of his career.

You know the old refrain. "Whatever Pláci wants, Pláci gets . . ." Friday night at the Metropolitan Opera, Plácido Domingo got to rhapsodise through an inflated proboscis, pine for an elusive love, swagger, stagger and die always beautifully on behalf of good old, self-sacrificing Cyrano de Bergerac. The esoteric vehicle, completed by Franco Alfano in 1936 and, it is claimed, never before performed in North America, was exhumed for the overachieving tenorissimo at the twilight of his singing career. Now 64 (iconoclasts still debate the official statistic), he will no doubt flourish as impresario, conductor and badness knows what else long after his vocal cords have rusted.

"Panache" is the last word uttered by Cyrano de Bergerac in Edmond Rostand's play and Franco Alfano's opera. Usually understood as "verve" or "theatricality," it derives from terms denoting both a writer's quill and the plumes on a cavalier's hat, hinting at the self-referential sophistication of the tale of the long-nosed swordsman and poet.